A gift is a risk. Let roses be the prodrome.
It's like it dropped a gold and a silver
ring with its name on it
in my brain. That was the gift

before the storm. It sent you a stumbling
block. Just scribble yes or no

on the form. Now every time the doorbell
rings I think someone's sent me one...Read more

Why not now go toward the things I love?
I have gazed the black flower blooming
her animal eye. Gacela oscura. Negra llorona.
Along the banks I follow her, astonished,
gathering grief's petals she lets fall like horns.

Like Jacob's angel, I touched the garnet of her hip,
and she knew my name, and I knew...Read more

Place its toothpicked pit in water, watch the grist
of its insides grow. Witness its populous bloom,
honeycombed with rough. Its cobblestones grip
the heart in its mitt, a closed fist thickened

and gritty as silt. The swamp of the plumb beat
adamant as weeds. The dish of which is salted

by ...Read more

not of silver nor of coral,
but of weatherbeaten laurel.
Here, he introduced a sea
uniform like tapestry;

here, a fig-tree; there, a face;
there, a dragon circling space-

designating here, a bower;
there, a pointed passion-flower.



About this poem
"He Made ...Read more

Some day, when trees have shed their leaves
And against the morning's white
The shivering birds beneath the eaves
Have sheltered for the night,
We'll turn our faces southward, love,
Toward the summer isle
Where bamboos spire to shafted grove
And wide-mouthed orchids smile.

And we will seek ...Read more

I like to be alone in someone else's house,
practicing my cosmic long distance wink.
I send it out toward a mirror
some distracted bored cosmonaut dropped
on an asteroid hurtling vastly
closer to our star. No one watches
me watching thousands
of television hours, knitting
a golden bobcat out of
...Read more

All the world is one, like an angry deity's essence dropped in the ocean
becoming monstrous: what happens Mumbai happens Paris
advanced warplanes to Japan-what happens? Egypt, Yemen, Syria
What happens on the Lunar New Year
I want to know, Professor, are there names for these mercurial moves?
A lexicon & vibration ...Read more

Things you know but can't say,
the sort of things, or propositions
that build up week after week at the end of the day,

& have to be dredged
by the practical operators so that their grosser cargo
& barges & boxy schedules can stay.

The great shovels and beaks and the rolling gantries
of ...Read more

I sit and meditate-my dog licks her paws
on the red-brown sofa
so many things somehow
it all is reduced to numbers letters figures
without faces or names only jagged lines
across the miles half-shadows
going into shadow-shadow then destruction the infinite light

here and there cannot be ...Read more

Before you have kids, you get a dog.
Then when you get a baby, you wait for the dog to die.
When the dog dies,
it's a relief.

When your babies aren't babies, you want a dog again.

The uses of the body,
you see where they end.

But we are only in the middle,
only mid-way.
...Read more

Cloud-topped and splendid, dominating all
The little lesser hills which compass thee,
Thou standest, bright with April's buoyancy,
Yet holding Winter in some shaded wall
Of stern, steep rock; and startled by the call
Of Spring, thy trees flush with expectancy
And cast a cloud of crimson, silently,
Above ...Read more

O Thou bright jewel in my aim I strive
To comprehend thee. Thine own words declare
Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach.
I cease to wonder, and no more attempt
Thine height t'explore, or fathom thy profound.
But, O my soul, sink not into despair,
Virtue is near thee, and with gentle hand
Would now ...Read more

I gaze at the Pacific and don't expect
to ever see the heads on Easter Island,
though I guess at sunlight rippling
the yellow grasses sloping to shore;

yesterday a doe ate grass in the orchard:
it lifted its ears and stopped eating

when it sensed us watching from
a glass hallway-in his ...Read more

Before jumping, remember
the span of time is long and gracious.
No one perches dangerously on any cliff
till you reply. Is there a pouch of rain

desperately thirsty people wait to drink from
when you say yes or no? I don't think so.

Hold that thought. Hold everything.
When they say "crucial...Read more

Some bad whiskey
I drink by myself
just like you
when this wind
blows as it does
in the delta
where a lost hearing aid
can be taken
for a grub worm
when the black constellations
make you swim backwards
in circles of blood
stableboys ruin their hands
for a while
...Read more

for Mark Strand
Beneath canopies of green, unionists marched doggedly
outside The Embassy. Their din was no match
for light lancing through leaves of madrone trees
lining the Paseo then flashing off glossy black Maybachs
skidding round a plaza like a monarch fleeing the paparazzi.
Your voice skipped and paused...Read more

A cold wind, later, but no rain.
A bus breathing heavily at the station.
Beggars at the gate, and the moon
like one bright horn of a white
cow up there in space. But

really, must I think about all this
a second time in this short life?
This crescent moon, like a bit
of ancient punctuation. ...Read more

"O Dreary life!" we cry, "O dreary life!"
And still the generations of the birds
Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds
Serenely live while we are keeping strife
With Heaven's true purpose in us, as a knife
Against which we may struggle. Ocean girds
Unslackened the dry land: savannah-swards
...Read more

If tired of trees I seek again mankind,
Well I know where to hie me-in the dawn,
To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
There amid lolling juniper reclined,
Myself unseen, I see in white defined
Far off the homes of men, and farther still
The graves of men on an opposing hill,
Living or dead, ...Read more

1
The best part
is when we're tired
of it all
in the same degree,

a fatigue we imagine
to be temporary,
and we lie near each other,
toes touching.

What's done is done,
we don't say,
to begin our transaction,

each letting go of something
without ...Read more